[Leica] where oh where is the DMR?

[dennis at hale-pohaku.com (Dennis Painter)]

Vick Ko wrote:

> I think you hit the nail on the head - "it's hard to design a good
> rangefinder".

Richard didn't say "design", he said "make" Design is easy ;-)

In manufacturing there is something called "design for manufacturing" and
in a nutshell it means making the design such that manufacturing will
return high yields of product. (in this case the RF assembly)

The rangefinder must be precise, it's characteristics must be known and
repeatable. A good design will make  precision dependent upon parts easily
manufactured and characterized by measurement. The parts meeting the
measurement standards will be used in assembly and the ones failing will be
discarded. Done properly the final assembly is guaranteed to meet
specifications. It's done all the time in the real world. If you know the
inputs you can predict the outputs. The fancy name for it is Six Sigma.

As to why would Zeiss do a film body first? I would say it was, or appeared
to be, sooner to market than the digital. The bodies should have enough
commonality that the incremental cost of making a film version is won back
by early sales and the fact that some Zeiss lovers would buy one no matter
they needed it.